Demographics & Economy

There are 465 licensed economic constructions in Beit Jala distributed as follows:

Sector

Number

Crafts and industrial constructions

182

Touristic constructions

8

Services

59

Trade constructions

207

Constructional factories

9

Total

465

The total number of Beit Jala citizens is (15,670) inhabitants and the total number of labors is (4000) distributed as follows:

Sources of income:

The source of income of Beit Jala citizens varies according to its economic activities and distributed as follows:

Public sector ,

Private sector,

Civil societies,

External Employment

Income of the tourism, industrial, commercial sectors

Transfers from the expatriates.

Commercial Sector:

In the past, the commercial sector was not active in Beit Jala as most of its citizens were originally farmers and craftsmen as well as the lack of funds and the trend of investors to invest outside the city.

But In the last few years, the commercial sector started to obviously be revived especially at the entrance of the city (Bab Zqaq) area (Main Street).

Its worth mentioning that the existence of a large number of governmental and private schools in addition to Al-Quds Open University as well as the existence of the main medical centers such as Beit Jala Governmental Hospital, Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation, Beit Jala Pharmaceutical Company, in addition to a large number of governmental and private societies contributed very well in activating the commercial and investment activities in the city.

Handicrafts and industrial sector:

The Bethlehem area, is specialized and well known for handicraft industries. Production includes a wide range of handmade articles made of olive wood, and mother of pearl. Most of these products are manufactured locally in small workshops using labor intensive techniques. Intricate and colorful hand embroidered Palestinian traditional costumes are produced in a number of Bethlehem district villages. Despite potential demand for Palestinian handicraft products in regional and foreign markets, exports remain minimal. This is due to the lack of adequate supportive incentives, especially with regard to credit promotion, and technical know-how. There is another major problem concerning, the quality of industrial products today: very few producers have trademarks on their products; many are not licensed and work at home, selling to certain souvenir shops at very cheap prices.

Banks & services:

The banks' movement is new in Beit Jala city as there are only 3 banks in the city. The city also has a public park, restaurants, hotels, fairly advanced medical services such as Beit Jala Governmental Hospital, Bethlehem Arab Society for Rehabilitation, Beit Jala Pharmaceutical Company, Beit Jala Medical center as well as other different civil societies.

Agriculture

Beit Jala lies on a total area of about (9,749) dunums of which (7,305) dunums are considered arable land, and (913) dunums are residential land. Agriculture production in Beit Jala depends mostly on rainwater, as for irrigated fields, they depend on domestic harvesting cisterns.

total area of rain fed and irrigated open cultivated vegetables in Beit Jala City (dunum)